


Broken Wings and All

by savorvrymoment



Series: Broken Wings [1]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Canon-Typical Violence, Hurt/Comfort, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-14
Updated: 2015-12-14
Packaged: 2018-05-06 15:14:06
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,126
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5421761
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/savorvrymoment/pseuds/savorvrymoment
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>~He feels the angel’s hands on his wings, coating the sheered ends, and the desperate murmurs of, “I’m so sorry. Brother, I’m so sorry…”~  Old one-shot moved from livejournal.  Written after Ep 5x19, in 2010.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Broken Wings and All

It’s a quick last minute decision, because he can feel Lucifer pulling back, waiting for the punch line. Waiting for the final shot. Waiting for Gabriel to make that final stupid move, because Gabriel is the Messenger—as powerful as the rest, yes, but not a warrior at heart like his brothers.  
  
He realizes just as he’s raising the blade behind Lucifer’s back that Lucifer’s waiting for him to do so, and it’s in that split second before Lucifer whirls around and turns the knife in on him that Gabriel leaves himself there to his brother’s murderous grip, drifting silently and invisibly around to a better angle, blade still clutched in his hand.   
  
Lucifer leers over Gabriel’s second projection of the night, snarling about ‘hocus pocus’ and learning all his tricks, and Gabriel waits to strike until Lucifer sinks the blade into the projection’s gut.  
  
The knife explodes in flames as Gabriel plunges it into Lucifer’s back, and he wonders for a moment if something’s gone wrong, if maybe Lucifer can’t be killed with an archangel’s blade, if he’s miscalculated this whole thing. But then Lucifer turns to look at him over his shoulder, his face horror-stricken and his eyes already beginning to light, and Gabriel just smirks.   
  
“I learned a few tricks when I was playing with the pagans, too. Just so you know,” he says. The flames are spreading from the blade, beginning to lick at his hands.   
  
Lucifer stares back at him, the horror in his face twisting to something different, something dangerous, and Gabriel suddenly realizes that he hasn’t won this battle yet.  
  
He tries to jerk away quickly, all the while drive the knife deeper so it will stick as he backs away, but Lucifer catches him first, grabs his shoulder with his hands. Gabriel twists out of his grip, tries to throw him off, but feels his brother take hold of his back, or rather, take hold of _him_ through his vessel’s back.   
  
He grunts in pain as his wings, all three strong and glorious pairs, are pulled out in the open, and he shakes them madly, feathers flying as he struggles to get away.   
  
He doesn’t see the blade, doesn’t see the look of fear and hatred on his brother’s face, doesn’t realize Lucifer is aiming for his back to kill. All he feels is a rush of sheer white hot pain, pain that defies all earthly reason and understanding. There’s screaming, shrieking, the glass shattering all around them, and it could be him or it could be Lucifer. Because then there is the bright, horrid light exploding around him of Grace being extinguished, and he’s crawling across the floor, his wings heavy and broken and bleeding red and silver and black down his back.   
  
He’s the one shrieking. He can hear himself now, the tables and chairs around him crumbling into dust, the walls shaking, the last chandelier in the room crashing to the floor. Lucifer’s body has burst into flames, and the fire is racing across the carpet to catch everything in its path. Gabriel can feel the heat all around him, burning at his already shredded wings.   
  
He needs to get out of here, he knows. He doesn’t know what the fire might do to him now that he’s weak and injured. And if the building collapses on him, he’ll never have the strength to get out of the wreckage. And either way, he just needs to get away. The last thing he needs is for the firemen to find him, complete with torn wings that he’s never going to get pulled back into his body, sitting in the middle of a burning building…  
  
He manages to pull himself outside into the dark night air, sucking in deep and difficult breaths that he shouldn’t even need. He ends up collapsing down onto the pavement. ‘Just for a moment,’ he tells himself. ‘Just for a quick minute, then I get the hell out of here. I just need a minute…’  
  
He reaches back behind him, reaching for his wings. They hurt, they hurt so much that just moving them forward so that he can assess the damage sends him howling once again. The windows of the few cars still parked outside crack and shatter in unison, and tires blow out of the one nearest him.   
  
His left wings are completely destroyed. The bottom one has been cut practically at the root, and it’s bleeding the worst, spilling shades of human blood, Grace, and black Enochian power. The middle one is cut crooked, sliced through the middle through bone and tissue, and the top one has been cut at the crest. The right wings have simply been sheered in a line, cut through the tips like a bird except a little too deep, and he’d drop down and cry at the tragedy if he wasn’t afraid for his life.   
  
He’s only known two angels to lose a wing—and they only lost _one_ wing—and neither of them survived. ‘Though they were both lower order,’ he tells himself. ‘Both lower order.’  
  
‘I just killed the devil, I can’t die now!’  
  
There’s a car coming down the road, he realizes, and he’s sitting in all of his glory, illuminated by the flaming building behind him. “Shit,” he mumbles to himself, trying to stumble up to his feet again. “Shit, shit, shit…”  
  
He realizes, as he’s doing a very poor job of dragging himself toward the back of the building, that the car is the Impala, and the Impala is swinging into the parking lot like there’s a damn stuntman driving it. He starts laughing, laughing like a maniac, and the movement hurts his back, kills his wings. He just barely keeping from shrieking again—he really doesn’t want to destroy the Impala when it looks like it might be his only ride out of here.  
  
He watches Dean jump out of the driver’s seat, looking around in a panic, and then Sam jumps out of the passenger’s seat. It takes all of two seconds for Sam’s eyes to land on him, but then Gabriel’s closer to him. Sam’s running toward him before Gabriel can even think.   
  
“Gabriel! Gabriel, you’re here!” Sam yells, smiling wide and bright, and Dean turns around, eyes tracking Sam. Sam’s smile quickly fades as he gets closer, though, and then he’s yelling in a much different tone. “Wings! Jesus Christ, your wings! Holy shit, Dean, get over here!!”  
  
Sam’s hands are on Gabriel’s skin, on his shoulders, then on his neck, searching his face. He looks terrified. Dean’s running then, too, eyes widening as he reaches Gabriel. “Holy shit,” Dean says. “Holy shit, man…”  
  
“I killed him,” Gabriel says. It seems pertinent. “I killed my brother. Deader than a doornail.”   
  
“Yeah, yeah, okay,” Dean say vaguely, grabbing under his arm and tugging. Sam mirrors the move, pulling him toward the Impala. Gabriel thinks he must really look like crap if they aren’t even going to stop and have a party over the devil being dead.   
  
“Come on, get in the car,” Sam says, yanking the door to the backseat open and pushing Gabriel inside. His wings brush heavy and painful against the backseat, and he realizes in a rush…  
  
“I’m going to be sick,” he announces, then leans back out of the car and vomits all over the pavement. Sam leaps back in time to avoid being puked on, cursing vaguely.  
  
“Fuck, is there a towel back there or something?” Dean asks.   
  
“Dean, if he pukes in the car, he pukes in the car. We need to go!” Sam snarls. The car door is slammed in Gabriel’s face as soon as he leans back into the seat, careful about his wings.   
  
“He’s also bleeding goo everywhere!” Dean says, somewhat indignant. Gabriel feels the car start anyway.   
  
“I just killed the devil, you ungrateful bastard,” Gabriel snaps, but it has no heart.   
  
“I’m calling Cas,” Sam says, voice panicked, apparently ignoring Dean. “Hopefully he’ll pick up this time.”  
  
“I’m not going to survive this,” Gabriel says quietly. Because there’s no way he’s going to. There just isn’t. His back is absolutely coated in his own blood.   
  
“Don’t talk like that,” Sam chides quietly, but glances in the rearview mirror at Gabriel, eyes so incredibly worried.   
  
Gabriel gives him a half-hearted smile in return.   
  
~*~  
  
Sam calls Cas five times in a row and gets nothing. He leaves three messages.   
  
“We haven’t been able to reach him since this stunt he pulled out in…” Dean starts.  
  
“Yeah, I know,” Gabriel says, not really in the mood to listen to prattling idiots. Sam glances up at him again in the rearview mirror, worried. “Let’s stop somewhere, ‘kay boys? At least let me die in peace?”  
  
“Gabriel…” Sam mutters, sounding heartbroken.   
  
“It’s okay,” Gabriel tells him, because it is. “He’s dead. We’re blessed. It’s all over.”  
  
“Shut up,” Dean says. “You sound like a preacher…”  
  
“I’m the Messenger,” he says, and he knows he sounds loopy. High as a kite. He’s starting to lose it.   
  
They turn into the first motel they find, a little rundown dump with half of the lights burnt out of its Vacancy sign. Dean goes in to pay and get the room key, and then they’re hauling Gabriel into the room under cover of night, his wings shaking and trembling. He catches Sam in the side with a wing, barely containing his own pained shout at the contact. When he’s pushed up and into the room, he can see the wide smears of blood he’s left across Sam’s shirt.   
  
Somehow, against all logic, Castiel is standing in the middle of the motel room.   
  
“Go back to the car and get the holy oil,” Cas orders, which has Dean turning around and stumbling back out of the room. Gabriel falls onto Sam, lets himself be pulled to the nearest bed and gingerly laid down on top of the comforter. He presses his face down into the musty sheets, closing his eyes, and just lets his body slump down, his broken wings falling listlessly around him. It feels better like this, being able to just let his wings hang from his body, even if he still feels like the fires of hell are eating at his back.   
  
Dean comes back with the holy oil, or so Gabriel assumes, because then Castiel is saying, “Put it on his wings. Use it all. There may not be enough, so treat the worst places first.”  
  
“Don’t put that shit on me,” Gabriel snarls.   
  
“It’s all I know to do, brother,” Castiel says quietly. “I don’t know what else to do.”  
  
“How are you even here?” Dean says. “We haven’t seen you in…” Then Dean’s hands are grabbing a broken, bleeding stub of wing, and he’s screaming in Enochian before he knows it.   
  
There’s chaos. The picture frames shatter, the windows explode, the walls shake. Cas is yelling—maybe at him, maybe at the boys—but all he knows is pain.   
  
He suddenly wants to die. Wishes he’d died right then in Lucifer’s face.  
  
He’s half-in, half-out of consciousness. He feels Castiel on top of him, straddling his hips and sitting on his ass, wrestling with him to keep him still. He feels the angel’s hands on his wings, coating the sheered ends, and the desperate murmurs of, “I’m so sorry. Brother, I’m so sorry…”  
  
Then, what he’d been dreading. The click of the lighter, and the eruption of his wings into the flames.   
  
He screams until he blacks out.   
  
~*~  
  
When he comes to, he’s not alone.   
  
It takes him a moment to actually come to. At first, he thinks he’s actually died, but no. He can feel himself, feel his Grace, feel his vessel, feel his…  
  
Wings. What he has left of them. What wasn’t ripped from him during the fight, and what wasn’t burned away while trying to save his life. They don’t hurt anymore, at least not like before. They feel stiff, drained, weary, and so very foreign. He gently moves them, grunts quietly at the ways it pulls at scar tissue and splintered bone, and tries to tuck them back inside his vessel.   
  
They won’t tuck back in, only tremble above his back. He lets out a long sigh, finally relaxes again.   
  
“Gabriel?”  
  
He blinks his eyes open, finds Sam watching him curiously. He gives the kid a half-grin, manages, “Hey, kiddo.”  
  
“Hey!” Sam says, and fucking beams at him. “You’re up. Or awake, or… You were moving your wings around, I thought you might be waking up. But you’ve moved your wings around before and still were out so, I didn’t know.”  
  
‘Wings,’ Gabriel thinks, and wants to sob. Still, he smiles at Sam, stretches out on the bed a bit.   
  
“Can I get you something?” Sam asks, already standing from the chair. “Cas is downstairs, if you need him. He’s been up here with you pretty much twenty-four-seven, but he just went to talk to Dean for a minute. Figures you’d wake up while he was gone, huh?”  
  
“Yeah,” Gabriel says, glancing around. “Hey, where exactly are we?”  
  
“Oh, we’re crashing at our friend Bobby’s place for now. He said there was room for archangels who kill the devil, don’t worry,” Sam says, still smiling.   
  
Gabriel chuckles. “I’m glad I’m appreciated.”  
  
“Always,” Sam says. Then, “Let me go get Cas so he can check up on you, ‘kay?”  
  
“Yeah, yeah sure.”  
  
Sam gives him one last smile before he leaves the room. One that says, ‘I’m so damn happy you’re still alive.’  
  
~*~  
  
Nothing drastically changes.   
  
He didn’t lose his Grace, and what Grace did bleed through the wings renewed itself in the healing process. In a couple of days, he’s up and tottering around the house, already able to do the stupid things like conjuring himself up chocolate to eat and beer to drink. It takes him longer, a couple of weeks, until he can fold his wings in enough to tuck them back inside the vessel, but that’s only due to his injuries.   
  
He’s as powerful afterwards as he was the day before, but that doesn’t make him feel any better about the situation.   
  
They’re his wings.   
  
No one talks about it, not even Castiel. Gabriel almost expects Castiel to say something, although maybe it all hits a little too close to home for an angel who’s already died once. And it’s not like Gabriel wants to talk about it. He just feels like it’s the giant elephant in the room.   
  
He’s taken to standing in the upstairs bathroom at night sometimes, only when everyone is asleep and Castiel is otherwise occupied, and unfolding his wings. He stands and stares at the reflection in the mirror of what was once majesty, now in pieces, and tries to reason with himself that it doesn’t matter.   
  
Except, he thinks everyone is asleep that night, and suddenly he hears, “Dean, what the hell are you…?”  
  
He whips his head around to find Sam standing in the bathroom doorway, and thinks that maybe he should have shut the bathroom door. The kid looks absolutely stricken, and Gabriel realizes with a start that his vessel is crying. Again. He brings a hand up and wipes his eyes quickly.   
  
“Gabriel…” Sam breathes.  
  
“It’s not a big deal,” Gabriel tells him, gesturing to the mirror. “I mean, I’ve done what has been planned for me to do. I’ve delivered the good news, yadda yadda yadda. And I guess blowing the trumpet was code for killing the devil. You never know sometimes.”  
  
Sam just stands there and stares, like he’s looking right into him. Gabriel chokes back a sob.   
  
“It’s not a big deal,” he repeats, not sure now who he’s trying to convince.   
  
Sam doesn’t answer, just steps forward and embraces him, and Gabriel crumbles.  
  
~*~  
  
“They’re still beautiful, you know?” Sam says quietly that night, a few days after the bathroom incident. It’s just the two of them sitting next to each other on the living room couch, watching the little box that Bobby calls a TV. Gabriel doubts the man would be getting cable is he didn’t have himself a devious archangel around.   
  
“What?” Gabriel asks, not really paying attention. The blond bitch on-screen is hot.   
  
“Your wings,” Sam says even quieter than before, but to Gabriel, those words seem like they’re shouted. “They’re still beautiful. I know that – well, no, I don’t know what it’s like. But judging from what Cas said, I think I get the general idea…”  
  
“What’d Cas say?” Gabriel asks, raising an eyebrow.   
  
“He just said,” Sam starts, then shakes his head. “No, it’s not important. It’s just – when I saw them the other day, that night? They were still amazing. Archangel wings…”  
  
Gabriel doesn’t comment. Decides for once to stick to the old adage of, ‘If you can’t say something nice, don’t say anything at all.’  
  
Sam sighs after a moment. “I just wanted you to know that. Because I don’t think you do.”  
  
There’s a moment’s hesitation before Gabriel says quietly, “They’re torn to shreds.”  
  
“Just battle scars,” Sam says, almost a whisper. “Beautiful battle scars.”  
  
Gabriel sighs, wants to turn and bury his face and Sam’s neck and just breathe, but says instead, “If you keep calling everything beautiful, I’m going to start calling you gay.”  
  
There’s no answer, and when Gabriel looks over at him, he’s suddenly acutely aware of what is about to happen. Probably more aware of it than Sam is, at least for a split second. And he can’t say he’s upset in the least.   
  
The kiss is soft at first, tentative, like Sam’s waiting for Gabriel to pull back and smite his ass right there in the middle of Bobby’s living room. But then it’s surging forward, hot breath and tongues and teeth and spit, Sam clawing to unbutton Gabriel’s shirt and Gabriel clawing to unbutton Sam’s before finally giving it up and snapping.   
  
Apparently, his aim has gotten bad without practice—the clothes fly everywhere all at once, like a small bomb. However, they both end up naked, and Sam’s laughing into his mouth, so all’s well that ends well.   
  
Sam flips them until he’s sitting on the couch, Gabriel held in his lap, and kisses him deep. Their cocks rub together, and Gabriel groans, grinding down. Then Sam slides his hands up Gabriel’s back, digging his nails into his shoulder blades, and every nerve ending in his body goes off like a rocket.   
  
“So fucking gorgeous,” Sam mumbles, moving to kiss along his jawline, and Gabriel wants to say, ‘No, I’m not.’ Except Sam makes him feel like maybe he can be.   
  
Maybe he still can be the Archangel Gabriel, broken wings and all.  
  
  
END


End file.
